Italo Calvino on abortion
Bringing a child into the world makes sense only if this
child is wanted consciously and freely by its two parents. If it is not, then
it is simply animal and criminal behavior. A human being becomes human not
through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an
act of will and love on the part of other people...
Only those people … who are a hundred percent convinced that they possess the
moral and physical possibility not only of rearing a child but of welcoming it
as a welcome and beloved presence, have the right to procreate. If this is not
the case, they must first of all do everything not to conceive, and if they do
conceive (given that the margin for unpredictability continues to be high)
abortion is not only a sad necessity, but a highly moral decision to be taken
with full freedom of conscience. I do not understand how you can associate
abortion with an idea of hedonism or the good life. Abortion is a terrifying
thing…
In abortion the person who is massacred, physically and morally, is the woman.
Also for any man with a conscience every abortion is a moral ordeal that leaves
a mark, but certainly here the fate of the woman is in such a disproportionate
condition of unfairness compared with the man’s, that every male should bite
his tongue three times before speaking about such things...
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Thanks for your thoughtful comments.